James Lyngdoh ko gussa kyon ata hai

Cut to last Friday outside Nirvachan Sadan. That Purnea Collector, Saharsa Commissioner and now the country’s Chief Election Commissioner James Michael Lyngdoh didn’t even make an appearance to the bank of waiting TV cameras and lights. He didn’t have to.

For, in one of the most stinging indictments of the Modi Government, he had delivered his verdict: get your act together, only then we can hold elections.

The Congress was quick to welcome this but Lyngdoh, his friends and former colleagues insist, isn’t batting for any party. Being one of the few bureaucrats who has the luxury of being insulated from political pressure—the EC is an independent, statutory body—Lyngdoh can afford to put his foot down.

Which he did on Gujarat after meeting victims, both Hindu and Muslim, after looking at the police’s abysmal record of arrests and conviction and listening to several frightened accounts of fear that a poll campaign could ignite the smouldering fires.

The decision, say those who have worked with Lyngdoh, wouldn’t have been very difficult given his past. ‘‘He’s always been a quiet fighter from within, but his target is always establishment politicians steeped in venality or those manipulating religion and caste,’’ recalls another colleague. Maybe waging that battle from the inside has led to quirks in his personality: ‘‘A stern exterior, occasionally harsh, a certain taciturnity, a touch of biting irony whenever he chooses to speak beyond his usual monosyllables,’’ confides one of his close friends.

‘‘He is a man of few words but occasionally drops a bombshell’’, admits one of his IAS colleagues from Bihar. This occasional abrasiveness was on display recently at Ahmedabad when he chose to reprimand a junior IAS officer by publicly scolding him as a ‘‘joker.’’ Even former Election Commissioner T N Seshan is aghast at the public rebuke. ‘‘It is not consistent with the dignity of the Commission,’’ he says.

Abrasiveness and rectitude often go together. ‘‘In Lyngdoh’s case it is anguish more than anger,’’ says I C Kumar, a civil servant of the 1961 batch now settled in Patna. Lyngdoh picked up moral rectitude and love for the law as a child. Son of a district judge from Meghalaya, Lyngdoh joined the IAS in 1961 after graduating in Economics from St Stephens College in Delhi University.

Although he had joined the civil service under the quota reserved for the Scheduled Tribe category, he began showing early promise working on the survey settlements in Durgawati in the Khaimur range, a hilly block bordering Uttar Pradesh. He married Parween after a few years and both of them developed a love for dogs and books.

Overcoming the initial language barrier, Lyngdoh soon went to do exemplary service as a sub-divisional officer, first in Garhwa, and later in Barh. Inspired by dedicated civil servant P S Appu, the author of Land Reforms in India, he attempted to book the land mafia of Bihar.

However, his genetic distrust of politicians got in the way and he was one of the casualties of frequent transfers. He finally left Bihar to do a stint in Hyderabad and spent most of his later years in the Centre on deputation. ‘‘He is an upright officer who would never succumb to political pressure,’’ claims K B Saxena, a retired civil servant who knows Lyngdoh rather well.

The constant battle with the establishment has made him a recluse. He spends time reading. ‘‘Other than literature, he has of late developed a taste for the culture of the so-called lost civilizations, like those of Tibet or Africa’’, says A R Bandopadhyaya, a 1961 batch retired IAS officer.

Stepping into the office of the EC, he began with the routine task of quietly rationalising voters’ lists, often questioning their veracity. ‘‘In contrast to the bluff and bluster of former election commissioner T N Seshan, Lyngdoh is likely to leave a more lasting imprint via his non-spectacular brand of quiet reforms,’’ says a senior civil servant who has worked with both of them closely.

Of late, Lyngdoh has stirred up a hornets’ nest by attempting to simply implement a Supreme Court directive. He notified that politicians will have to declare criminal records, if any, along with their assets and educational qualifications while filing their nominations. Politicians of all hues have got together to totally oppose such a crusade. On the issue of foreign observers for the Jammu and Kashmir election next month, he resorted to one of his acerbic comments: ‘‘The native is no more deterred by the white man.’’ For that, however, he has received the full backing of Seshan, who admits: ‘‘Lyngdoh is cent per cent correct, we are no banana republic, appointing a foreign observer is abrogating the dignity of our democratic process.’’

On the issue of Gujarat, Lyngdoh, has locked horns with the government. This has revived the tussle between the legislature and executive, on the one hand, and the Commission and judiciary on the other.

In The Spirit of Laws, French philosopher Montesquieu talked of three organs of government: the legislature, the executive and the judiciary. ‘‘He would have talked of a fourth: the Election Commission,’’ argues former CEC Dr G V G Krishnamurty, ‘‘only if he had seen a populous democracy like India where half a billion people are registered voters and over half of these vote.’’

Dr Krishnamurty is not far off the mark. From a file-pushing, data-gathering innocuous office largely involved with logistics, the institution of the EC today has risen to become an important pillar of democracy so much so that in the last one decade, it has successfully challenged the executive and redefined its independent boundaries.

Why did the Constitution framers vest such powers in the EC that it can override the PM as far as the timing of elections are concerned? ‘‘Because when the Prime Minister announces an election, he is not speaking as the PM anymore, but as the leader of the party in power. He is already a partisan voice. The EC is simply upholding the highest tradition of the democratic process in the country,’’ says Krishnamurty.

Seshan provided not only a voice but a loud bark to the watchdog character of the institution. In the first half of the 1990s, Seshan sent shivers down the spines of politicians with his quirky personality and abrasive mannerisms.

Today, its latest incumbent, the mild-mannered man of measured tones, James Lyngdoh, has also begun reactivating its bully pulpit role, in his silent often monosyllabic tones, and at times with sudden eruptions of outbursts. The gussa only adds bite to the bark of this watchdog institution.